Total War: Test of Pharaoh – Trojan Horse

If I say Creative Assembly, I’m sure the reader will immediately jump to Total War. More than 20 years ago, the studio rethought the grand strategy genre by putting the players in the hands of the battles, often involving thousands of fighters, in addition to moving puppets around the world map. There have been a million iterations of the Total War franchise in the last two decades, it has taken place in the Roman Empire and the Far East, and the events of the Dark Ages have also been processed, to name just the most popular ones.

Of course, the series has developed continuously over the years, new game elements and mechanisms have been added, not to mention the graphics. The series has always been characterized by grandiosity, with a huge map and a lot of people, but in the 2010s, under the subtitle Total War Saga, the studio also produced releases that focused only on a small corner of history, such as Thrones of Britannia or Troy . The former took place in the British Isles, the latter in the area surrounding the Aegean Sea. The Saga episodes were also unique in that they focused more on warlords, leaders, and political and family scheming. In Hungary, turbulence was caused by internal strife rather than an external threat. As I mentioned, the playing field in these is much smaller, the units are less diverse, maybe that’s why the Saga episodes have always been sold cheaper than the “regular” Total War titles. I thought it was important to describe all of this at the beginning of the article, and by the time you read it through, hopefully you will understand why. Let’s see the details…

We are in ancient Egypt sometime around 1203 BCE. Pharaoh Merenptah has died, and a power struggle for the throne begins between his brothers. We are at the end of the Bronze Age, Egypt is past its prime, and the Hittites, the Canaanite and the Sea peoples are an increasing threat. At the beginning of the game, we can choose from 8 characters with which we want to conduct the campaign. There are four Egyptian, two Canaanite and two Hittite leaders to choose from, and this has blown the number of playable factions. So, the world of Total War: Pharaoh consists of a total of three populations with minimal differences in their characteristics, culture and gameplay.

The playing field consists of areas in the territory of Egypt, something on the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East (the Sinai Peninsula, today’s Israel, Palestine, Syria, part of Turkey, Cyprus), so it is not something big. Instead, as always in Saga games, it was split into small pieces to make it look bigger. All this was topped by the fact that this relatively small area is shared by no less than 72 leaders/families/ethnic groups.

Total War: Pharaoh tries to create the impression of a large-scale game, but unfortunately it fails. There is a lack of diversity in terms of both units and the playing field. For example, there is no cavalry or “camel”, only foot soldiers and chariots are at our disposal, we can play with any character and faction. We can’t build siege engines either, although they weren’t very useful in army versus army battles anyway, and when besieging cities we can use ladders, battering rams, etc. as usual.

The overall picture is different in terms of the playing field as well – also when it comes to the graphics. The strategic map is very detailed, you can zoom in and out nicely, it is detailed, but it is a bit crowded. If I zoom in, everything is fine, I see exactly what I need to move my units (roads, settlements, borders), if I zoom out, a million icons, names and colors appear. At first, it wasn’t clear to me which areas were mine, because they weren’t highlighted. And the abundance of colors is due to the already mentioned 72 ethnic groups.

The diplomatic screen is unfortunately even worse. At the bottom, in the middle, it lists the known peoples in a small window, but every time it is opened, the camera automatically moves to the area of ​​the people at the top of the list (even if we can’t see anything of them because of the fog of war), which is incredibly annoying. In addition, we cannot use the WASD buttons to move around the map here, unlike all previous Total War games.

The interface for the strategic map will not be new to players familiar with the series, but a beginner will get lost in it. The game pushes us a lot of information in various panels and pop-up windows. Fortunately, the tutorial characteristic of the series is not missing now, and it can be customized, how often it should appear, but it does not explain the most basic things for a beginner player, such as what you can find where on the screen, which resource is good for what and why it is important, how the notifications are organized.

Anyway, let’s get over it and watch the battles, at least they are spectacular! Well no. Unfortunately, the desert environment means that the landscape is quite flat, with minimal variation. If you look at the pictures depicting the battles, you will understand what I mean. Moreover, these were made with ultra settings! I’m serious, the Builders of Greece demo I visited recently gave me a better view. Of course, there are also beautifully composed landscapes, especially if there is a city or a river on the map, and the wooded, bushy countryside of the Hittite areas is obviously less barren (at least you can use the landmarks on them), but unfortunately, this also kills the variety. If you add to this the monoplane unit types, then you will lose the desire to play the battles yourself and not leave it to the machine. I did so soon enough.

In terms of gameplay and mechanics, there are a lot of things that come back from Total War Saga: Troy. Not only money (gold) is the only resource, but also wood, stone, bronze and food. They cannot be produced in all regions, typically only one type of raw material is available in a region. Religion is also an important part of the game. In the spirit of polytheism, we can worship three of the 19 available almighties at the same time. They provide various bonuses, some to our units, others to our settlements, or just to a certain building.

The characters are the central elements of Pharaoh, because in addition to being the leaders of the playable factions, there will also be something to do with them as warlords and aspirant rulers. The almost RPG-like character screen returns only from Troy, where during their development we can not only distribute skill points, but also change the equipment and accompaniment of our people, as well as assign various prefixes to them. These all provide buffs that can affect everything from population happiness to army speed to the abilities of the warlord’s bodyguards.

At some point in the campaign we have to decide whether, as Egyptians, we aim for the Pharaoh’s throne and participate in the civil war that breaks out, or opt out of the catfight and attack the Hittite kingdom instead. Of course, this also works the other way around, as a Hittite, we can go in the direction of pharaonic ambitions.

The Council is essential for political scheming and obtaining the pharaonic/royal throne. As leaders, we must gain legitimacy by fighting, conquering, or even undermining the credibility of our opponents. With various intrigues and conspiracies, we can weaken the other members of the Council with the aim of eventually gaining the coveted throne by moving up the ranks. Even in the earlier parts of the series, these political battles always left me cold, and I didn’t want to deal with it now either. We can choose to ignore the Council if we’re just interested in conquest, but the game will remind us that we ignored it at the end of each turn. Unfortunately, this cannot be turned off, although the campaign itself can be customized quite well. The forcing of this line hurts me a little, because in the marketing Creative Assembly presented the characters in such a way that they couldn’t help emphasizing that you will find a character that suits your own play style, because there are bloodthirsty warlords and cunning manipulators among them.

Much more could be said about the game, but by now I think everyone has realized that Pharaoh is not a real, classic Total War episode, but even Saga is lacking. I could mostly imagine it next to Troy in the form of DLC, because it matches it in terms of age and area, not to mention the game mechanics inherited from it. As I wrote at the beginning of the article, regular Total War episodes are a hundred times more grandiose. Pharaoh has just arrived, which does not bear the Saga marker in its name, but is still based on them, and does all this at a normal Total War price. In addition, it can be purchased in Deluxe and Dynasty editions (the latter costs nearly one hundred euros), which will provide automatic access to future DLCs, bringing new playable factions to the game. I can’t imagine who will be attracted to playing the campaign over and over on this small and flat map with a new people with minimal variation in units and buildings.

Total War: Pharaoh is not a bad game at all, but the direction in which the studio took the series is, in my opinion, more than annoying. I am convinced that this title will only be remembered as a bad example.

The test copy was provided by the domestic distributor of the game, Cenega Hungary.